How Do I Feel? Feeling as a Highly Sensitive Individual
How Do I Feel?
Feeling as a Highly Sensitive Individual
The Prince, The Pea and The Damn Fan
I have always been a light sleeper. I toss and turn and wake up at all odd hours. If there is a ceiling fan on, or a fan in the room moving the air around, I will likely not sleep. For some reason, I have always jolted awake at 2:00 a.m. Even with training and practice, I still jolt awake at almost precisely 5:00 a.m. every morning. Lately, since my father passed, it has been at 4:44 a.m., almost on the exact moment.
I try everything. Blackout curtains, check. No white noise, check. No water an hour and a half before bedtime, check. No animals in the bedroom with me, check. Cotton clothing only, tank top and shorts, no underwear, check. No electronics in the room unless I want to do insomnia shopping, which I have done. A cotton woven blanket over the bottom sheet and a matching cotton blanket on top of me, with up to six blankets over me, all cotton. No joke. I tried weighted blankets. I want them to work, but I end up fighting them all night. And I can never, ever sleep with someone else in the bed.
One of my earlier personal training clients was a successful businessman, and he had only been married twice. Very unusual for Southern California. He was married the first time for thirty-some years before he lost his first wife, and twenty-plus years to his second wife. I asked him what his secret was to a long marriage. In all seriousness, he said, “Separate bedrooms. That way you can visit one another when you want, or not.”
That sounded so perfect to me. Or maybe separate houses. Still a loving couple, but without having to worry about someone keeping me up all night with the breathing, sweating, moving, and all the other things I feel. It is very challenging to lie in bed, on my back, motionless, and feel that the fabric below me is slightly rougher than the sheet over me. Or to feel that there is a fold in the blanket somewhere instead of everything being flat. I can feel the air temperature in the room. Please let it be seventy-six degrees and not moist. The Southern California climate suits me the best. No air conditioning, near the Pacific Ocean, and dry air.
I feel too much.
The Hugini
When I opened my yoga studio in 2011, I was a non-hugging yoga teacher. Firstly, we did not have a touchy-feely household. I do not know why, but my parents were not physical. I cannot remember a hug, ever. I remember holding hands. I remember having fun with my parents, but I do not recall being picked up and held. I do not recall hugging every day, if ever.
It was not a mean thing. Just not something we did. I can see now how that might have influenced my own non-hugging personality. As an adult, I had gone through Boy Scout leadership training as a teenager, and while working at Scout Camp, a big deal was made about appropriateness in touching. It was strictly enforced, too. As a cast member at Disney Traditions, which I took three times as I moved from position to position, we were taught appropriate distancing and non-invasive direction giving.
Looking back at my early yoga teaching days, I must have seemed oddly uncomfortable with everyone hugging and not me. I am still a fist-bump or elbow-tap person. Growing up in Japan, where personal distance is often maintained even in public and a bow is as close as one gets to a handshake, it just seemed natural to me to give everyone their own space.
And then a wonderful nurse and teacher named Dolly came into the studio. She hugged everyone, even me. I would try to wiggle out of it or do the classic side hug, but she was not having it. After a while, I was hugging everyone. It is still something that I am not always comfortable with or that comes naturally to me. However, I noticed that my mood changed after getting a Dolly hug.
So, being me, I began to research the benefits of human touch. There are some great science-backed studies, including work done in the British school system, about the benefits of positive touch on our biochemistry and mental health.
The reason I never hugged was that I am a feeler. When I am teaching a class, I can feel the mood of everyone in the class, even the ones who seem energetically shut down. I feel all four corners of the room. I can sense what someone may need energetically, or at least what my body reads as a need in that moment. It comes to me like an ocean wave. I perceive a feeling at the back of the class, in all four corners of the room, and everywhere in between. I can feel if the mood in the room shifts collectively and if it feels heavy or light.
This personal navigation system is why I believe people often feel safe in my class. I can sense if someone might need me to be softer, take a break, push harder, or pick up the pace. When someone physically touches me, I can often feel where they are holding tension in their body, or where the body seems to be moving energy or holding it. My stretching clients say that I have magic fingers because I find just the right spot.
It is not magic. Here is my process when working on someone’s body. I warm my hands to clear off any residual energy from what I was doing before. I place my hands on the other person’s body, with their permission, and set them there for a few breaths. I wait until their body seems to speak to me. My hands begin to glide like a magnet toward energy that does not seem to be moving. You might frame it as a neuroelectrical interruption. My hands go automatically to where something feels stuck.
I try to get myself out of the way and allow their body to guide my hands toward where their body seems to be seeking relief. If I think too much, it interrupts the process and I do not get guided. I can often feel where their energy seems blocked and what service I might provide to help their body flow more freely again, free of constraints and blockages. Usually, my hands are gliding slightly above their skin and clothing, not exploring with my fingers. I get lost in a trance-like state as their body guides me. The closest comparison I can make is Reiki, of which I have done level one training twice. However, where I differentiate is that I am the witness and not the doer.
Now imagine, if you will, having all that information arriving at once in the form of a hug, without my being in a meditative state first. Someone wrapping their body closely around mine, pulling me tight, with no escape, head near mine, and my body receiving whatever they seem to be carrying at the moment. Or what they may have been storing for years. Emotional trauma stuck in the body, or, as I will discuss in the sixth writing in this series, The Senses of a Highly Sensitive Person, the yogic principle of Samskara. Unresolved energetic holding in the body from this life, or perhaps past lives, which is the basis of all yoga therapy.
It can be overwhelming. Especially if the person hugging me pokes or pushes against my thoracic spine directly behind my heart. That feels to me like being stabbed in the heart from behind, and that feeling on my skin can last for hours. I cannot deal with being touched mid-spine.
Keeping Distance
How do you deal with personal space? Were you raised in a culture or family that touched a lot, or not at all?
Oftentimes, in yoga teacher training sessions, the spontaneous and unplanned conversations with the group can be the most enlightening. I remember one in particular that we had with several different cultural backgrounds in the group. It was explained that in one group member’s Asian household, there was never any touching, and it was just not something anyone did on purpose or out of spite. It was just the way it was. Even with multiple generations living in the same household.
Another member was from Brazil and found this amazing. My understanding is that, generally speaking, Romance-language cultures can be much more comfortable with touching and less personal space. For me, I now like a mix. If I do not know you that well, personally, I keep my distance. I can greet someone from three feet away and feel comfortable. Anything closer and I get uncomfortable. Even if I have known you for several months, I may still not want to be touched. Legally, it is risky in these times. Energetically, it can take me hours to decompress from unprovoked touching or hugging, especially if the other person’s energy, mood, or motives feel strong.
I have developed several protective rituals to prepare myself before entering group situations, particularly if there are unknown people in the room. I have interviewed countless body workers, yoga teachers, and massage therapists on how they clear energy off of themselves. I use them all, especially if I have been around many people in one day.
What do you do to not carry the weight of others with you every day?
Troy Alan Cox
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